Shadows and Masks
by Lifeform
Summary: Shadow in Final Fantasy 6 leaves the rest of the heros to end his quest for frogivness and to get some peace in his soul. He stays in Kefka's tower until the end for some very special and dear reasons.


** Shadows and Masks **

Kefka had been destroyed! Just minuets ago the insane God's body crumbled into dust and light, and released the world from his cold grip. But the ones who had destroyed the mad one was in grave danger, since the Tower where he had resided was supported by magic, but the magic was fading away, and the tower collapsing. The people who had dared to go up against the God, and survived, was fleeing the battlescene to not get buried under the mass.   
Shadow was watching Relm, from some distance, so that she would not get herself killed because of this. He was not comfortable by the thought of her getting hurt. She on the other had was helping Strago, her grandfather. Strago were going to be the only family that she would have left, so Shadow hoped that also he would escape unharmed.   
He hoped that they all would get out in time, so that he could go to work. Once he had slowed down enough to be last, he called for Interceptor, his doberman companion. He hid behind some rocks, and hoped that the other wouldn't notice until it was too late and they was in the air. He sat down and pet Interceptor one last time. He looked the dog into the eyes and gave the last commands.  
The dog looked at him for a short second with sad eyes, but then walked away from his former master.  
Then he waited for another ten seconds before he rose again from his hiding. Now he could be sure that they would not have the time to stop him from this, he had no other word for it, suicide. They would of course hope that he had got by somehow, because hope is was humanity was at her best on. He himself hoped that there would be time to meet up with some old friends for the last time, and that old sins would be forgiven before his departure from this world. To accomplish his hopes, he ventured up again, in a speed that was almost inhuman. 

He jumped past great cliffs and deep holes, and slashed a raving monster when he pasted by in high pursuit of his need for righteousness. He ducked another monster attacking and ignored it so he would not be late to his own burial. With only one thing in mind he charged past the broken statues. In his minds eye only one persons face flickered.   
The one who had been his best and only friend.  
Someone who he had robed a entire train with.   
A man, wounded, who had asked him to kill the friend, when they had been trailed by the Empire.   
Baram who he had walked out on.   
The Empire had taken him prisoner, but Baram had not told the Empire, even if he surely had been tortured, that they had been two persons that had robed the train.  
Shadow had read in papers later that it had only been one thief. He had walked out on Baram, but Baram had continued protecting him. He owed his friend much, and he intended to repay that debt. 

He had reached the last and highest level of the tower, which was now shaking and tumbling like a tree in a typhoon. It would not be long until it would fall.   
Shadow looked around, and immediately saw what he had come for. On the floor just a few meters away lay a bloody mass that once had been a human body. 

Kefka laid on the cold and hard floor which had been the area within magick, but the powers that he had been given full control over was long gone. There was an emptiness in his soul he could not fill, and his body had given up on him. He waited until the last of which was human life would disappear so that he would be given peace at last. Peace from the world and its pains. He had work so long for this peace, to purge the world from the evil of humanity. He had not succeeded, since they had struck back and almost killed him. He had given up. There was no hope for humanity, he was the ultimate proof of that. They would create their own way of living, and eventually, their own death. The only hope ha had left saw that it would be a cruel end for humanity. He noticed something move into his line of view, but his body would not comply and the eyes would not see. He felt treathen by this new, unknown form that had interrupted his last lines of thought.   
Then a shadow, came down over him, and he hoped that it was the angel of death that he had wished for. But the for was too familiar, and the aura of the shadow was human. Then everything came clear and he saw two eyes staring on him. They reminded him of something, but his mind was broken, and his soul raped by magic, so the eyes did not mean anything to him anymore than pain. He embraced that pain to become his own, so that his thought would be torn from the half asleep state to fully awake.  
The eyes was blue.

Then came the voice, Calling to him, his name. But it was something wrong.  
"Kefka," Shadow said with a cold voice, "You still alive?" He did not wait for an awnser, but drew his dirk that he had been carrying for so many years. He remembered Baram, and looked away. But Kefka called for his attention, and he turned his head back to look on the doomed human who had tortured humankind with his evil, yet unknown intentions. He showed Kefka the knife.   
Kefka watched.  
"Why?" was all that the mad one could spit out.  
Shadow raised his hand to his face, and carefully removed his helmet which held his face in shadows. Clyde. He was Clyde without this mask. With a effort he threw away the thing that he had worn for so many years. He had been hiding for to long, running away from his responsibilities. Kefka looked straight up into his face, without showing anything.  
The tower stopped shaking for a few seconds when Kefka saw the one that he had tried to destroy just minutes ago.   
And then he relaxed.   
"My mask is gone too, Clyde," Kefka whispered to the demasked.   
Clyde's face suddenly broke into tears when he thought about how much his friend must have suffered in the laboratories, sentenced into a life worse than death, into becoming the insane Kefka Palazzo. How the Empire had ruled that he would become their first testsubject. Clyde could have saved everyone in the entire world from so much pain, if he just had been stronger. If he just had dared to kill his best friend. But he hadn't had the courage to do it, so he had become Shadow. But he had just been running away, as always.  
Suddenly everything went so slow, when he understood the true meaning of Baram's actions. He let that sunk in, and then he raised the dirk.  
"I am sorry over that I ran away," he said, and his voice broke apart into a sobbing.  
"But you came back to me, and... and..." the one who once had been his best friend also had a hard time speaking. He cough up some blood, and he knew that he would die anyway, so he nodded.  
"Don't worry, I won't run this time," Clyde spoke. Then he hardened the grip of the dirk and brought it down into his best friend's heart, just as he had wished he would have done so many years ago.   



End file.
